Alles Leben
Ist Lieben
Ist Leiden
Glauben
Sehen
Alles Sehen
Ist Gehen
Ist Erleben
Finden
Werden
Lebendig
Liebhaber
Leidender
Werden
Überzeugt werden
Ist sehend geworden
Sehen
Ohne Farbbrille
Gehen
Ohne Gehstöcke
Erleben
Ohne Vorurteile
Ohne Schutzmantel
Oder Deckmantel
Finden
Ohne Gier
Ohne Angst
Doch ohne
Satt werden auch
Ist
Werden
Durch
Leben.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Everyone is a little deaf
To some other person
A little blind
To some very important lesson
A little dumb
And someone’s fool
And a little numb
And sometimes a little too cool.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Just like on quiet stealthy
Hesitant feet
Autumn circles and stalks
Summer’s heat
My thoughts reminisce
My heart’s sweet defeat
My dreams learn to become
Silent and discrete
’Twas never love
That broke a heart
Love never was spurned
That understood the art
Of stoking desire
By slaking its thirst
And stoking desire
By letting it thirst
And knowing the difference
Between the two
Is loving Summer
And Autumn too.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Jedes Lächeln wirft einen Schatten
In deiner Nacht fühle ich mich geborgen
Wärme mich mit deiner dunklen Seite
Dein Lächeln spar für deine Lügen
So viel Sonne hatte ich noch nie
So viele neue Freunde gefunden
So viel Schimmer so schillernd gefeiert
Und so viel Einsamkeit empfunden
Verbirg dein Lächeln unter deinem Ernst
Denn die heiße Sonne spendet kaltes Licht
Diesen Sommer schmolzen Masken viele
Diesen Sommer wurd ich nachdenklich.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
A blind man walked into the busy tram
His cane tapped audibly on the wall
Of many a closed mind –
There was an unsteady way he shuffled about
Stumbled, and then clutched the railing
Without letting go of his staff, still swaying
In his other hand three polyethylene bags
Full of his grocery – I tried but
Could not read the look on his calm face.
I hate it when the conversations die,
He must be thinking, I’m thinking
As the whole tram stared at him
But he could not stare back.
Two stops later, he gingerly tapped his way
Out of the tram, his face calm, illegible.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Originally I used to cover my face
I was new to the street
A freshly fallen angel –
Would old friends pass this way
And recognise me? Old colleagues?
Old neighbours with whom I shared
A beer and a philosophical hour
Reflecting on the vicissitudes of life
The changing destinies of human lives
Society, politics, the role of science in
Religion, male jokes about women
And feeling entitled to be fortunate.
Will they recognise me now, when
They pass this way and hurry past the
Wretched beggar on the street corner
Maybe throw him a coin but avoid his intrusive eyes?
Opposites don’t match, is their marching song
Did they recognise me in me?
But I don’t avoid their eyes anymore
The eyes of my yesterday
Not anymore
Not anymore.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Whisperings
…
Whisperings of a new return of harmattan…
Is it hazy? Was it foggy? Dark, bright?
Feels, like Dawn, Sounds, like Dawn
Looks, like new Dawn –
An early breath of Harmattan serenaded
My heart –
Birds accompany, airy prose
Crickets nonstop chirping
Yet night is gone ~
Deeply I love the boundary between
Rains and thirsty Harmattan…
Nature has said yes,
Why say no?
…
For some reason, that poem had been going round and round in her head all morning. It had been with her when she arose and saw the haze through the window. It had been with her when she thought of her destination. But she had lost it now, in the middle, on the path between her beautiful beginning and the end of her journey. Now she was walking past the toughest, roughest, most chaotic, dirtiest market in her world and it had torn her out of her reverie. She would have much preferred not to come this way, but she had to, to get to the bus she needed.
The beautiful woman continued calmly down her path, ignoring the lusty cat-calls being pelted without restrain at her by the Oshodi traders. Rough young men with coarse voices and bad intentions. Given half a chance, they would make her regret not only her manner of dressing today, but that she even came this way at all, to this dirty, colourless, overpopulated market, to do her shopping.
Yet she walked with her head high, as though she were not burning with shame as she heard the phrases they were directing at her.
“Na me and you o! If I finish you, you no go want leave me lai-lai!”
“Baby you carry o! Me sef I carry. Come see am!”
Loud peals of dirty male laughter rolled after her. Her? Other people were following the scene with amusement. She walked as fast as she could without seeming to be in any hurry. There were other women, she knew, who would have returned insult for insult, thrown dirt for dirt, traded bad tongue for bad tongue, claimed an eye for an eye, verily, and a tooth for a tooth…. But she couldn’t. She was above that, above them. So she silently breathed her humiliation, in and out, in and out, in and out.
Soon she was out of range of the insults. She was in the thick of the crowd now, marching with the faceless rhythm of those who work a lot and earn a little. The masses. Nobody paid any attention to her now. Everybody was walking fast, as though propelled by a common will. Now she relaxed, and as she let out that one big outflow of breath, for some reason a few tears accompanied it and blurred her vision. Surreptitiously her left hand came up to her eyes and, in one quick little motion, her thumb and forefinger, stroking inwards from the outer corners of both eyes, met at the top of the bridge of her nose, and her vision was restored. Yet she was angry.
She boarded the Molue and settled back uncomfortably between two market women on a seat that would surely have seated only two people conveniently, if convenience could ever be spoken of at all in connection with a Molue bus. But a fresh breeze sighed softly through the window as the bus gathered speed and left the hell-hole of a market behind.
… to be continued-
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
If you wish to skip the excerpts, and read the full length of this delicate modern African love Story – TWICE IS NOT ENOUGH – just order it on any Amazon store.
Sing of green
For soon it’ll be gone to dust
A memory of autumn’s ancestor
Saying I used to know a lass
And her name was Summer
Yet look underneath her smile
Yes I mean her brightest smile
Where a shadow sweet as secret sorrow
Suckled on her honey lips
And read my thoughts of you
Then sing with me, sing of green
From the caverns of throat
Dry hoarse tears, from depths of wrong
And right, let the hordes of your
Passion shout with song!
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Your love was a noon dance
Abruptly torn out of the startled wind
And then your heart beat
Sorrows are stepping in rhyme with the breathless wind
They say it was an African evening
Moonrays on my yesterday, hush little girl
I can hear your sobs five thousand kilometres away
For night unites what day divides
Dreams reveal what the heart is hiding
I know you miss me still
Those morning strolls underneath the bougainvillea
Golden teardrops bloomed along the empty street
The hibiscus was our only guardian
The day you became a woman and I a man.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
My hands are clean when
I rub them in the dirt
Washed in the tears of the homeless
Warmed by the laughter of the dignity
Of the downtrodden
Did they lose it all
Just to gain this clarity in their eyes?
Don’t lie to a person
Who has seen through all of society’s lies
They can unmask every government
They can unmask every family
They can unmask every act of friendliness
They know the difference between kindness
And charity. They can unmask you
And they can unmask me.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 